European tour 2014 day 4

Day 4

A rest day.

Day four was never going to be a riding day; I had always planned today to be a rest day, for two reasons.  The first was we had covered a lot of miles the last four days, to get us down to the Alps and we deserved it.  The other reason was personal, my wife’s best friend and god mother to our son Martin lived in Tignes Les Brevieres, she sadly passed away from the big C and we wanted to pop in and pay our respects and say hi.

 

Bourg Saint Maurice is a lovely little town it has all you need a super market to stock up, if you need too.  It also has a lovely open air pool if you want to go for a swim and look up at the mountains and watch eagles soaring.  There are an array of shops and restaurants, however you must remember the half day closing. If adventure is your thing you can go white water rafting, cycling, climbing, off road riding and driving and paragliding among other things

One thing I had noticed for this the time of year, is that there was still an awful lot of snow capping the mountains, and later that day we were told that the pass through the Col de I’Iseran was closed due to snow.  Luckily for us we weren’t heading that way although, if you ever get the chance to ride it, it is a lovely road ride.

The morning was a little grey with the threat of rain, but the cloud was broken and the sun did its best to shine through. We had a typical French breakfast of breads, hams and jams. There were juices and hot drinks too, with yoghurts, fruit and cereals such as muesli. We ate heartily and prepared for the rest of the day

We left Bourg and headed up the mountain to Tignes Les Brevieres. These were the first proper alpine roads I had ever driven, many years ago, and every time we visited I always said, I’d love to ride these roads one day, which is one of the things that inspired me to get my bike licence.

 

The road out of Bourg is straight and fast, you then get to a few hairpin bends, then the road winds along the side of the mountain until you reach a few more hairpins. The road then follows the side of the mountain valley weaving in and out until we turned right and the road drops down slightly in to the little village of Tignes Les Brevieres. Although I say little, the village has doubled in size since we first went there.

 
 

Here we spent a short time with Lisa’s family before making our way up the summer road (ski slope during the skiing season) to Tignes Les Boisses where we paid our respects. Here we then walked to the dam and looked down the valley to take in the views. They were working on the dam and although not empty you could see the old bridge at the far end where the road used to go. We also watched the swallows flying out from under the dam trying to catch flies to take back to their young.

 

 

 

We then headed back down the mountain to Bourg to find somewhere to have lunch. On the way down we passed where it had rained, it looked like it had rain very hard and the clouds where low. However we were lucky as we’d missed it. Soon we were back in Bourg and wondering around looking for somewhere to eat. We found a nice little Brasserie just off the high street down from the train station where I had a sandwich, one of the biggest sandwiches I’ve ever had. In fact all our meals had been good value for money. We also needed to do some shopping so Sue and I went to the garage to get some top up oil and then went clothes shopping in the larger outlets.

It was this afternoon that I heard once more from the RAC. They called to tell me my bike would be repaired and ready to go tomorrow (day 5) Thursday, and that they would hire me a car so I could go and pick it up. This put me in a quandary and I told them that I couldn’t make that decision alone and would have to first speak to the family. They agreed and said they would phone later.

Speaking to the family I realised that the situation we were in wasn’t ideal or the way it had been planned, however the bike shop was an eight and a half hour drive away. It would mean an early start just to get there, then a hotel for the night, then nearly a nine hour ride back to meet up on the evening of day 6, and that was if the traffic was in my favour and I had no hold ups. It also meant that someone would have to take my place as the navigator for the next two days, a job no one wanted to take responsibility for. They also were concerned how tired I would be after two such long days. We had a long talk about the pros and cons and despite the fact that I wanted my bike back, it made perfect sense to leave it and carry on with our adventure as planned.

Later that evening the RAC rang again to confirm they had booked a hire car and hotel for me.  I told them that I had not agreed to this and that I in fact was going to leave the bike at the repairers and collect it on our return journey.  They seemed a little put out, but agreed and said if I did change my mind over night that everything was in place.

 

That evening we were all still full from lunch, so decided to go for a walk around the town picking up some presents and souvenirs as we went.  We also looked in the smaller clothes and shoe shops etc. after a while we found a nice little café where we had hot drinks and ice cream before thinking about retiring.